A New Reason to Hate Windows

This is a discussion on A New Reason to Hate Windows within the General Discussions forums, part of the Community Boards category; I found a brand new reason to hate Microsoft Windows (I have plenty already).
My boss logged into his computer ...

A New Reason to Hate Windows

I found a brand new reason to hate Microsoft Windows (I have plenty already).

My boss logged into his computer (windows 7 pro) this morning, becuase it rebooted overnight due to some windows updates. the login was completely routine and without incident. He then tried to run a program that accesses network resources. The program threw an error message complaining of not being able to access the resource, and asked for his username and password. keep in mind he's already logged into his computer at this point, using the very username and password for which it's asking him. it's at this point that he called me, and I immediately suspected that his password had expired. I checked to see if there are any notifications to that effect, but there were none. Finally, I decided to log out and log back in, and only then did windows finally complain that his password had expired, and needed to be changed. so the long and the short of it is this: windows will happily let you log in after a reboot, with cached credentials, even if your active directory password has expired, but you must then log off and log back on to get the password change notification, and you cannot access network resources that require an AD logon until you do.

I'm glad I have been outta that for almost 10 years now. When I got my new computer, I left a small partition for Windows 7, since, you know, a new computer, so why not having a look at some new computer games? Since I had heard some pretty good criticism about Windows 7 and my last encounter with Windows had been when XP got released, I played around with the OS a little bit. Not to give a wrong impression, it is not really a bad operating system and I have to admit that Microsoft really improved since XP. But I just can't work with Windows. I don't find a comfortable workflow, I miss a lot of my everyday GNU tools, I miss all the preinstalled software and I can't stand searching tons of software pool websites for a decent tool instead of just hacking in a command to a handy package manager.

I'm definitely not one of those linux fan boys repeating the same old lame 'arguments' over and over again, and if you're happy with Windows, fine, go ahead. The OS surely has its right to exist, and it may be a handy tool to many people. It's just that with linux, I found a much more comfortable world to live in, and I don't want to go back ever again.

But you know, auto-login is a security risk in itself. Windows doesn't check credentials and such stuff.
I don't know the story behind it, but auto logging in is bad (which is why it's discouraged). If you're still using a discouraged feature, then you will have to deal with the world of hurt.
I'm not sure if there's a way to enforce checking via some policy, though.

But you know, auto-login is a security risk in itself. Windows doesn't check credentials and such stuff.
I don't know the story behind it, but auto logging in is bad (which is why it's discouraged). If you're still using a discouraged feature, then you will have to deal with the world of hurt.
I'm not sure if there's a way to enforce checking via some policy, though.

it's not logging in automatically. he entered his (expired) password, and it let him in.

That is nothing, i hooked up my SOs Windows Phone to my Windows 7 PC for the first time a couple of weeks ago. It started the usual 'Installing Device Drivers' procedure, but when it finished, i was asked to restart my computer for the changes to take effect. No, this was not on Windows 98, this was on Windows 7, but hang on, it gets better.

After rebooting, which is a 20 minute ceremony that requires a blood sacrifice and a special rain dance to be performed, on my current system, i was finally ready to go. I plug the phone back in, and a window pops up about downloading and installing Zune. I dismissed it and tried accessing the phones memory as i would any other flash drive or phone or whatever: No luck. After a bit of Google i realize that, to be able to use a Windows Phone as you would a thumb drive, you have to jump through hoops of fire and edit some registry keys and fumble with DLLs and all that jazz. So i plug the phone back in, and play along with the Zune installer for a while, this takes AN AGE to complete, and at this point im getting mildly irritated (read: fuming at the mouth). Lo and behold, the installation has finished, please restart your computer for the changes to take effect, at which point i decided to commit sepukku, just to make the pain stop.

This was with a WINDOWS phone on a WINDOWS machine. My own Android phone acts exactly like a thumb drive when i plug it in, and it's completely painless. I simply cannot fathom how Microsoft can make their own stuff work together in such a poor manner, when Google manages to make it quick and easy.

And ofcourse, Zune then claimed ownership of all my MP3 and WAV files, without ever asking me. To top it off it is a completely sloppy, slow and disfunctional piece of software, the only program i can think of that is equally disappointing is iTunes.

I'm sure there's alot of skilled programmers/developers at Microsoft, but there must be an equal amount of ........ty and clueless managers that simply have no idea what it is the users are looking for, so much bloat. Simply, staggering amounts of uselessness.

>>I suppose the flip-side of the local cache is that the road warriors with their laptops can still login to their local machine whilst away from office.

That's what I was thinking. Also, if my DC chokes in the office, everyone can still log in using cached credentials - it takes longer to log in and I dont know how long they can do that for, but it does allow them to do so.

>>I'm sure there's alot of skilled programmers/developers at Microsoft, but there must be an equal amount of ........ty and clueless managers that simply have no idea what it is the users are looking for, so much bloat. Simply, staggering amounts of uselessness.

Do a search on recent articles about Microsoft and the culture there. I'm sure they are not always accurate, but there's loads of quotes from ex-employees with axes to grind about "nothing gets the green-light unless its part of Windows or Office" and problems with team performance ratings etc...

I know that this isnt a great way to view what goes on in Redmond these days, but it's a far cry from the stories employees used to give in the halcyon days of the 90s.

That is nothing, i hooked up my SOs Windows Phone to my Windows 7 PC for the first time a couple of weeks ago. It started the usual 'Installing Device Drivers' procedure, but when it finished, i was asked to restart my computer for the changes to take effect. No, this was not on Windows 98, this was on Windows 7, but hang on, it gets better.

After rebooting, which is a 20 minute ceremony that requires a blood sacrifice and a special rain dance to be performed, on my current system, i was finally ready to go. I plug the phone back in, and a window pops up about downloading and installing Zune. I dismissed it and tried accessing the phones memory as i would any other flash drive or phone or whatever: No luck. After a bit of Google i realize that, to be able to use a Windows Phone as you would a thumb drive, you have to jump through hoops of fire and edit some registry keys and fumble with DLLs and all that jazz. So i plug the phone back in, and play along with the Zune installer for a while, this takes AN AGE to complete, and at this point im getting mildly irritated (read: fuming at the mouth). Lo and behold, the installation has finished, please restart your computer for the changes to take effect, at which point i decided to commit sepukku, just to make the pain stop.

This was with a WINDOWS phone on a WINDOWS machine. My own Android phone acts exactly like a thumb drive when i plug it in, and it's completely painless. I simply cannot fathom how Microsoft can make their own stuff work together in such a poor manner, when Google manages to make it quick and easy.

Sounds retarded. Just another proof of how Microsoft's products are horribly convulsed, have performance issues and generally have just horrible implementation and are buggy as hell. Not to mention they love to use complicated and deprecated technologies such as COM.

And ofcourse, Zune then claimed ownership of all my MP3 and WAV files, without ever asking me. To top it off it is a completely sloppy, slow and disfunctional piece of software, the only program i can think of that is equally disappointing is iTunes.

I'm sure there's alot of skilled programmers/developers at Microsoft, but there must be an equal amount of ........ty and clueless managers that simply have no idea what it is the users are looking for, so much bloat. Simply, staggering amounts of uselessness.

This is one of the reasons why Windows needs to change, and why I'm rooting for the new Metro API to take root and become the standard for the future.
(The UI sucks IMO; but the API itself is a huge leap of bounds from the old C API.)

Do a search on recent articles about Microsoft and the culture there. I'm sure they are not always accurate, but there's loads of quotes from ex-employees with axes to grind about "nothing gets the green-light unless its part of Windows or Office" and problems with team performance ratings etc...

This is one of the reasons why Windows needs to change, and why I'm rooting for the new Metro API to take root and become the standard for the future.
(The UI sucks IMO; but the API itself is a huge leap of bounds from the old C API.)

It's been quite a while since WinRT was first released. I'm still surprised this error still shows, on a programming forum of all places. WinRT is not a replacement of the WinAPI. Microsoft has stated this much more than once. If the WinRT is "leaps and bounds from the old C API", as you put it, this is because it doesn't even start to cover WinAPI scope. Try and write a device driver in C++/WRL or C++/CX.

It's been quite a while since WinRT was first released. I'm still surprised this error still shows, on a programming forum of all places. WinRT is not a replacement of the WinAPI. Microsoft has stated this much more than once. If the WinRT is "leaps and bounds from the old C API", as you put it, this is because it doesn't even start to cover WinAPI scope. Try and write a device driver in C++/WRL or C++/CX.

I never said it would replace it. Yet, anyway.
Yes, it will not replace everything. It might replace desktop apps one day. Maybe then we won't have the issue that every program steals associations and pops up windows right in front of your face whenever they feel like it. That's good, right?
Everything has a transition, but if it's successful, then who knows? Perhaps we might code drivers in it one day. Obviously, until such a time (if it ever comes), C/C++ will still be used to write your drivers.

Yes, it will not replace everything. It might replace desktop apps one day. Maybe then we won't have the issue that every program steals associations and pops up windows right in front of your face whenever they feel like it. That's good, right?

Nope. Replacing Software Design Guidelines with an API is hardly a good thing. But we'll have this conversation again in a couple of years...